Vatican City, 19 November, 2025 / 1:55 pm (ACI Africa).
At his Nov. 19 general audience, Pope Leo XIV urged Catholics to “connect faith with reality,” saying that the death and resurrection of Christ form the foundation of an integral ecology and the Christian call to care for creation.
“The death and resurrection of Jesus, therefore, are the foundation of a spirituality of integral ecology, without which the words of faith remain unconnected to reality and the words of science remain outside the heart,” he said.
Continuing his catechesis series on the Resurrection and the challenges of the contemporary world, the pope rooted his reflection in the Gospel of John, which recounts that Mary Magdalene did not immediately recognize the risen Christ at the empty tomb, mistaking him for the gardener. That detail, he said, highlights the continuous “turning” of conversion.
“The fact that Mary turned that Easter morning is a sign of this: Only through conversion upon conversion do we pass from this valley of tears to the new Jerusalem,” he said.
Cultivating and caring for the garden, the pope added, is the original task brought to fulfillment by Jesus. “His last word on the cross — ‘It is finished’ — invites each one to rediscover that same task, our task.” If the human person is not a caretaker of the garden, he warned, “he becomes its destroyer,” citing Laudato Si’ on the need for a contemplative gaze upon creation.
